A Winter Day in North Texas
Thursday, Jan 29 2009

28 January 2009
With startlingly accurate predictions, the weathermen forecast an "ice storm" for North Texas — and delivered. At the end of my drive home the night before, the rain was just turning to sleet and the air had developed a chest-gripping numbness to it. My boss, who had elected to stay at a local hotel rather than risk the 60+ mile drive home, had suggested as I left that I take early-morning stock and if the road were, in fact, icy to just stay home until it thawed. When I opened the back door to release the dogs from their over-night captivity and saw what Jack Frost had painted, I chose to honour his suggestion (upper left corner). Almost four hours later, the temperature still had not crested the 32 degree freezing point, but I prepared for departure anyway – work was beckoning and the mantra from on high is "if you’re not visible, you’re not working." The upper right and lower left photos show the ice already disappearing despite Mother Nature’s attempt to keep an icy grip on things. The two-hour, 16-mile trudge to the office afforded me little in the way of at-office work but I did what I could and then left with the sun still high in the sky. If the drive home were to be as long, I had no interest in making it after dark. The lower right photo is of the same garden as the upper right photo sans all the ice. Temperatures had climbed into the mid-40s allowing the stunning ice portrait to fade to nothingness leaving in its wake mud and pools of water to re-freeze overnight.
This is a very typical North Texas Winter Day. I’d trade all the ice for a simple 3-day snow storm.
Cheers.

~KR (Written on 29 January 2009)

Listening to:I’ve Been This Way Before by Neil Diamond
from Essentials